Electrical characterization of gas discharges using a numerical treatment. Application to dielectric barrier discharges

In this article a numerical method for an electrical data treatment which is aimed to define the key electrical parameters monitoring the thermal and chemical properties of gas discharges, in particular dielectric barrier discharges is presented. Numerous electrical parameters characterize the electrical discharges: pulses onset voltage, pulse number, pulse height, pulse width, power injected in the discharge cell, etc. Our treatment using Matlab(R) allows us to get such data, as is shown in the present article for a point-to-plane dielectric barrier discharge. Moreover it shows how a separation between the different components of the current signals remaining after the elimination of the capacitive component can be obtained. Much attention is paid, in particular, to the impulsive components (streamers and Trichel pulses components) and on the nonimpulsive ones constituting what we call the pseudocontinuous components, generally ignored in the literature. So four different categories of charges are considered: for the positive voltage alternation, a positive-pulse charge (Q(imp+)) and a positive pseudocontinuous charge (Q(cont+)) and for the negative alternation, a negative-pulse charge (Q(imp-)) and a negative pseudocontinuous charge (Q(cont-)). The article also intends to show how the main electrical parameters (current charge and power) can be determined by different ways and how to select the best way for representative measurements in every situation. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.